The City of Launceston conducts itself as if it were operating in a time warp and in the context of the late 19th cum 20th C. In turn the Council tends to render itself a peri-colonial irrelevance in 2022.
Curiously, the signals that Council sends out is that it is symbolically linking itself to the Cornwell Launceston in the UK in some strange way.
'Launceston' has a conflicted history that increasingly calls its citizens to consider how they wish to identify themselves now and in the context of a more diverse cultural reality and a changing world.
Importantly, all this is something that has been evolving relative to understanding 'place and placemaking' – local governance's actual business – for decade upon decade in Launceston.
In 2022 looking forward, and in a marketing context, the question has to be asked is why ever would 'Council', and Councillors, want to cast itself/themselves as being Eurocentric and dressed up in Medieval garb.
In the light of Launceston's, indeed Tasmania's, indeed Australia's need to reimagine itself in the light of current understandings of what 'cultural identity' entails plus current understandings of 'place', well there is a real need for change.
That's so, rather than some romantic and outdated imagining in a marketing sense.
It is sheer folly to continue to pretend that the city's future should be entirely tied up in sensibilities that are far from where the mindset of governance ideally could be. Shedding the city of its peri--colonialism could be nothing less than positive in the 21st C.
Actually getting rid of the Medieval 'bling' and pretentious ostentatiousness could be to a large extent something on top of what is required to get the city on track to being more relevant. To look more realistically ahead the city needs to move proactively into 21st digital era as a first step.
With this in mind Council really does need to meet in public more overtly. The current strategy of static live streaming meetings when digitally and more inclusive opportunities exist is unexplainable. It is concerning that such changes are apparently being assiduously resisted. If that is because a greater level of inclusivity is not welcomed, what is needed is a change agent to bring Council into the 21st C more overtly.
Possibly, the status quo is quite comfortable with 'old expectations' that includes the 'Parkinson's Law' factor that reign supreme in Launceston's Town Hall. In the 21st C 'indirect representational democracy' is increasingly less and less relevant in regard to delivering effective transparent and accountable governance.
It is time, to seriously reassess how local governance in Tasmania performs and operates in line with what it delivers to ratepayers, investors and others. Any notion that the status quo is good enough is seriously flawed and belongs in some imagining of the past that in the end is a serious folly.
As Albert Einstein tells us "learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow" there is a need to be mindful of the unavoidable change imperative in the 21st C and to actually get on with the change.
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